


The First 24 Hours

by Tia_Gem



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Anxiety, Canon-Typical Violence, emotional support dog, my oc is an anxious ball of fluff not built for the world of fallout, what better way to torture her
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-03-06 05:58:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18845038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tia_Gem/pseuds/Tia_Gem
Summary: She paused and looked down at her lap, her raw hands with blisters already forming. Her old life was long gone, everyone she knew and loved was dead. This world was not the soft, cushy time she'd spent married to a soldier, playing house with a newborn and pretending like she wanted to put that silly paralegal degree to actual use. It was deadly and scary and if she was going to find Shaun, she'd need to put that old world behind her.---The Sole Survivor's first 24 hours out of Vault 111.





	The First 24 Hours

When she first stepped out into the sun, two hundred years after she was supposed to die, she thought maybe she had. The world looked like Hell itself had chewed it up and spat it back out. There was no green, at least not the healthy kind. Her old home was in ruins, valuables stolen a thousand ages ago by scavengers long dead. Storms of thick green fog and lightning that spewed radiation plagued the world, and the regular rain stung her skin like rubbing alcohol. 

 

Codsworth was still around, somehow. Perhaps it was his overly chipper attitude that kept people from stripping him down to spare parts, or perhaps like her it was pure blind luck. In the end, it probably didn't matter. The old robot prattled on about how he struggled in a world that he couldn't fulfill his purpose in. She lent a sympathetic ear to him, despite her own grief. It was a welcome yet brief reprieve from her own troubles. In thanks, Codsworth told her where to look next and offered to cook her something before she left.

 

She wandered into her old bathroom and stared at her reflection for what seemed like years. She didn't look much different than earlier that morning- no, two centuries ago. Her strawberry blonde hair was a little matted from the residual damp lingering on her after her imprisonment, frizzy at the roots but style unchanged by time. She was pale, eyelids still puffy and pink from the hours she spent crying in front of Nate's cryopod and there was a smear of bug guts on her cheek. 

 

She longed for a hot shower and a warm hug from her best friend. 

 

By the time she set out for Concord, it was starting to get dark. She tripped on the bodies of a man and his dog, if one could call it that, and shrieked as she scrambled away from them. After all, the only dead bodies she'd seen until now were her father's and husband's. It took her a long few minutes to gather herself and continue, shaking with nervousness and fear.

 

A little up the road was the old Red Rocket station. She had once made many a terrible, dirty joke at the expense of the franchise with her friends and family. Once upon a time she could take Shaun up on a walk and chat with one of her old friends who'd been the manager. Now the only thing that greeted her was rust and a dog, who trotted up to her like an old friend and barked, eager to see a friendly face.

 

“Hey there, boy. Are you lost?” she asked, kneeling down to let him sniff her hand. The German Shepherd licked her hand and nuzzled it for pets, which she gladly gave him. His warm fur shocked her into realizing just how cold she was, and she fought another set of shivers that wracked her spine. 

 

“Well, would you like to come with me then?” 

 

The dog huffed his approval and jumped up, putting both paws on her chest and licking her face. She snorted and almost smiled, turning her head away so he didn't get into her mouth. “Yes, yes, all the kisses!” she said with a half-hearted chuckle, rubbing at his ears. 

 

The commotion awoke a nest of some sort, and she found herself surrounded by giant hairless rats snapping at her heels as she jumped up on a table and cowered in terror. Her new dog quickly killed them all, snapping their necks with a growl. He then barked to let her know the danger had passed and whimpered at her when she didn’t move immediately.

 

Carefully she eased her way down. She decided, more cautious than necessary perhaps, to stay at the truck station for the night. If the bombs had created monstrously enormous flies and roaches and rats the size of dogs, then she wanted to stay where it was safe until it was light enough to see. 

 

She made a tiny bed out of some old rotten newspapers in the back of the manager's office and cried herself to sleep. Several times in the night she awoke to distant, ominous sounds. The dog investigated every time, doing a perimeter check and coming back to her as if to tell her that it was safe and that she could sleep. Once he was satisfied, he’d curl up against her until she dozed again.

 

The dog woke her as the sky started to turn grey with the morning. She felt terrible, stiff and chilled to the bone, but she needed to keep going. If she could just find a police officer or, at this point, even another living human being, maybe she could find her child. Things would be okay if she could just find Shaun and hold him close to her.

 

Concord made her heart ache. It was in shambles, the buildings boarded up in they weren’t destroyed. One house that she could get into was desolate, only an old flat Nuka Cola in the fridge and a faded red bandana on the dresser upstairs. She tied the bandana around the dog’s neck, as she used to do to her old pet, a beautiful blue heeler that had run away, as some semblance of normalcy. 

 

The rest of the once beautiful and proud town was now nothing but a decaying ruin, but it was not silent. She'd never heard gunfire in real life, the sound effects on her television shows didn't hold a candle to the real thing. The closer she got, the louder and sharper the noises were, starting off like popcorn in the microwave and then intensifying until they sounded like fireworks exploding in the air.

 

Quietly, slowly, she approached the street where it was coming from. Every fiber of her being was telling her to run away, to go back home and go to sleep and wake up from this terrible nightmare, but she persisted. Gunfire meant there might be people, and perhaps if she waited it out the victor would help her.

 

She ducked behind a truck and peeked around the tire. At the balcony of the old museum was a man firing lasers at a group of people below. The people he was trying to kill were shooting at him in retaliation, missing only barely; she watched him dodge bullets, dancing from one end of the balcony to the other like a disturbing ballet. The people on the street looked terrifying, wearing leather jackets and harnesses and filthy pieces of metal strapped to their chests and arms. One man was shirtless and had painted his face black, and another had shaved his head completely bald but wore a long beard. 

 

The dog growled lowly, ears down. One of the people was getting close, and he decided it was better to attack than to run. He lunged before she could grab him. He leapt on the man and latched his jaws around his arm. The man screamed and flailed, trying to hit the dog with a tire iron. 

 

She gasped and, on instinct, threw a rock at the man. She hit him squarely in the back of his head, and he whipped around viciously. His face was twisted into a permanent snarl, eyes wild. “Hey! This your dog? I'm coming for you, little girl!” he spat. 

 

The dog must have understood what the man said, or else sensed the danger his new master was in, because he let go only to pounce on the man and sink his teeth into his neck, knocking him over. He shook his head violently and ripped the man’s throat, severing arteries and flinging blood. Once he was satisfied that she was safe, he let go and went up to her. 

 

Immediately she ran to the man's body and checked his pulse. She felt her  stomach churn when she couldn't find one, watching in horror as the blood pooled beneath him. He was dead.

 

She thought she was going to be sick if she had to see another dead body. 

 

Another person, this time a woman wearing only underwear and a leather harness, ran up to them. “Mark! You fucking killed him!” she screamed. 

 

“N-no, you don't understand!” she tried to say, but the woman was already on her, wrestling her to the ground and trying to strangle her. The dog tried to pull the woman off of her, to no avail. She must have been on chems, because she was way too strong for how lithe she looked. 

 

Somehow, in the struggle, she grabbed the tire iron from the dead man and smacked the woman in the head with it, knocking her away. She sat up and continued to smack the woman with the iron until she was sure she wouldn’t be getting up soon. She clutched at her own neck and panted.

 

The dog came up to her and licked her cheek to encourage her to get up. She did, standing on trembling legs, ready to go somewhere else to look for help. 

 

“Hey, up here! On the balcony!” 

 

She looked up at the man with the laser. Now that she was closer she could see that he wore a cowboy hat and a trenchcoat. “I've got a group of settlers inside, the raiders are almost through the door! Grab that laser musket and help us! Please!” the man begged before disappearing inside. 

 

She saw what he must have been talking about, an odd looking gun with a red glowing chamber. She picked it up and ran the crank on the side experimentally. The gun hummed to life in her hands, hot and deadly. 

 

Looking up at the now empty balcony, then at the doors in front of her, she fought with herself. Should she run, go find help to look for her baby? Time was of the essence in kidnappings, she knew that much from those true crime shows she used to watch with her parents. But the man had said that people were in trouble. She couldn't live with herself knowing that she'd left innocent people to die or perhaps to some worse fate, if there was one. And if she helped them, maybe they'd help her in return.

 

_ No price is too high,  _ she’d told Nate when she filled out the paperwork for the vault. She’d taken a joking tone at the time but now it rang clear and serious to her. She knew what she had to do.

 

She steeled herself and opened the door to the museum.

 

The moment she was through the door, there was a hailstorm of bullets, not all in her direction specifically. She ducked behind a display case and sat there, frozen in fear. She could hear the people- raiders, the man had called them- trying to break through a door. They pounded at it with their feet and fists and guns, shouting angry slurs and curses. 

 

There were innocent people on the other side of that door, she reminded herself. They were going to die if she didn't do something. She looked down at the glowing musket in her hands and took a deep, quivering breath.  _ Nate help me, _ she pleaded in her head, clutching at the dog tags and ring hanging on the ball chain around her neck. 

 

She unrooted herself from the spot she'd taken cover in and fired the musket at the raiders above her. The laser hit one in the face, knocking him over and bringing attention away from the door. “Who the fuck is that?” someone growled, maybe their leader. “I want her head!” 

 

With a squeal of terror, she cranked the gun again and fired. She did it repeatedly in rapid succession, eyes shut tight as she aimed randomly. The recoil from the musket didn't help, nor did the burn against her sensitive palms, but she figured if she just shot a lot that eventually it would hit someone, statistically speaking.

 

Her dog barked, catching her attention, and darted to an open door. She followed him quickly, eager to get some form of cover, and ran through the old exhibits still running their tapes. A raider met them in the last room and swung at her with a pocketknife. She screamed in surprise and shot him in the gut out of reflex. 

 

He fell to his knees and collapsed to the floor. She didn't have the time to check if he was alive, because another came in through the doorway and shot at her. It took three or four shots to take him down, since she kept missing, and her dog led her up the stairs the raiders had come from. 

 

She refused to acknowledge that she'd just killed two people, and when the thought came to her later in a moment of rest she reasoned with herself that it was self defense. 

 

It got easier with each raider. One she wrestled with over the musket,; he tried to rip it out of her hands and she scuffled with him. She shoved him extra hard, giving him a swift kick in the groin like how Nate had showed her back when they were first dating. He lost his balance at the edge of the banister and fell to the ground with a sickening crunch of old wood. She didn't look to see the damage, and despite her inner turmoil she convinced herself that was a good thing as she made her way up the maze of broken walls and hidden stairs.

 

“I'm gonna come in there and I'm gonna skin every last one’a yuh!” she heard a raider shout as she approached the top floor. 

 

“H-hey!” she squeaked, cranking up the musket. “Leave th-them alo… go away!” She cursed at herself internally, her stutter made her sound like a petulent teenger trying to stand up to her parents.Nate had always told her that she needed to work on it if she was to become an actual lawyer.

 

The raider, in a rage, abandoned the door and started chasing her across the hallway. She fired at him multiple times, but he must have been too high to feel pain, because it wasn’t until she shot him in the head and his face blew apart in front of her that he stopped coming at her. She shouted as she was covered in the spray of blood. 

 

She wiped at her face, dropping the musket in pain as it burned in her hands, and went to the door the raiders were pounding at. Her dog was pawing at the door, whining. “Hello? I-is anyone in there? I'm not… I'm friendly, I-I promise!” she called through the wood.

 

The door swung open and she found herself face to face with the man on the balcony. “Man, I don't know who you are, but your timing's impeccable,” he said with a relieved look about him. He let her and her dog into the room, shutting the door tightly behind them. “Preston Garvey, Commonwealth Minutemen.”

 

“M-minutemen?” She felt dizzy, overwhelmed by everything. She was still covered in blood and this man was speaking as if she should know what he was talking about. When had minutemen come back? She wished Nate was there, he would be able to keep her on her feet while she processed everything. 

 

“Protect the people at a minute's notice. That was the idea. So I joined up, wanted to make a difference. And I did, but… things fell apart. Now it looks like I'm the last Minuteman standing.” Preston looked like he would've been pleased with the pun if he and his group of people weren't in so much danger. 

 

She put a shaking hand to her head in an attempt to stifle the hammering behind her eyes. “I'm sorry, I… I need your help,” she said quietly. She felt faint and her dog licked at the hand that was still at her side. “Nothing makes sense, the world is…” She couldn’t finish.

 

“You okay? Maybe you should sit down for a sec,” Preston suggested. She nodded and regretted that instantly and numbly sat on the couch. The dog placed his head in her lap and she buried her fingers in his fur idly. An old woman who smelled like cigarette ash and rust carefully placed a hand on her shoulder. She jumped initially, the gentle touch startling her.

 

“Your energy is so strong, busy. Yellow and static. You must be having a panic attack,” the lady said softly. 

 

All she could do was swallow and nod. She couldn’t explain that she was probably having withdrawals from her anxiety meds, that she was struggling not to dissociate.

 

“Oh great, we get rescued by some girl who can't even handle killing a few raiders,” a very angry woman from across the room snapped. 

 

“Now lay off the girl. She might be from a caravan or something, doesn't look like she even knows how to hold a musket,” said a man at a terminal on the desk. “Her hands are all burnt.”

 

“Look, we need your help,” Preston interrupted loudly. “And then maybe we can help you, huh? What brought you out here?”

 

She looked up at him. Would he understand? He seemed friendly enough, not hostile at least. The words struggled to come out, her tongue felt thick and swollen, her throat dry. “I-I… my son… he was k-kidnapped, taken from me… I need to find him, he's just a baby… he's not even six months old...” Her voice shook, threatening to burst the dam and flood her eyes with tears. The old lady at her side squeezed her shoulder and the dog whined. 

 

“That's… messed up. I'm so sorry.” Preston gave her a look of genuine sympathy. “I know how this world can be. A month ago there were twenty of us, yesterday there were eight. Now we're five. First it was the ghouls in Lexington and now this mess…” He sounded frustrated and she understood it.

 

“That sounds awful… I-I can't imagine…” She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. Between her dog and the knowledge that she's not the only one who lost something to the hell that the world had turned into, she could feel the dizziness start to fade.

 

Preston raised his eyebrows. “Thanks,” he said, sounding surprised. “It's nice to meet someone who actually cares. What's your name?” 

 

She paused and looked down at her lap, her raw hands with blisters already forming. Her old life was long gone, everyone she knew and loved was dead. This world was not the soft, cushy time she'd spent married to a soldier, playing house with a newborn and pretending like she wanted to put that silly paralegal degree to actual use. Not even the death of her father could compare to this nightmare world she’d been thrust into. It was deadly and scary and if she was going to find Shaun, she'd need to put that old world behind her. 

 

_ Nate would understand, _ she thought to herself as she balled her already stiff fingers into fists. 

 

“My name is... Lilly.” 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you all enjoyed this! Thank you so much for reading and please leave a kudos and a comment if you so wish!
> 
> EDIT: In the year since I've written this, I've decided that a lot of what Lilly talks about is no longer canon to her character. I'm keeping this up for archiving purposes(to read and cringe over in five years) and because I have issues orphaning my works. Any other works with Lilly in them that I may post in the future will not be in compliance with this fic.


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